journal topics exploring neuroscience, perception and design
researchers, authors and architects referenced with sources
documented architectural routes, from Venice to Guadalajara and the Nordic countries
Shifting Boundaries is an independent journal about neuroarchitecture and the human sciences in architecture: perception, atmosphere, light, biophilic design and evidence-based design, alongside architectural routes through the work of Carlo Scarpa, Luis Barragán and Alvar Aalto. It is not affiliated with Moving Boundaries Collaborative or its course - for the original program, visit movingboundaries.org.
Articles here follow a simple sourcing rule: every factual claim traces back to a named book, peer-reviewed paper, museum, university or standards body, with the year of publication stated alongside it. Where a claim comes from a single study, an advocacy group or an organization with a financial stake in the result, the article says so rather than presenting it as settled research, and the journal does not reproduce quotes, reviews or testimonials attributed to real individuals who attended any course documented here.
The site is organized around three strands: profiles of the researchers and theorists most often cited in this field, on the faculty and researchers page; a library of books, papers and podcasts under resources; and the about page, which sets out the editorial approach in full and its relationship to Moving Boundaries Collaborative.
What the editions covered
Between 2022 and 2024, the original course brought architects together with neuroscientists, psychologists and anthropologists for on-site study of buildings in Spain and Portugal, Mexico, Italy and the Nordic countries. Shifting Boundaries keeps that editorial map alive as a set of independent, source-based guides: what each route covered, which architects and researchers it drew on, and what a reader can look for in the same buildings today. The underlying field itself gained an institutional home in 2003, when the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture (ANFA) was certified as a nonprofit after taking shape the previous year as a legacy project of the American Institute of Architects' national convention in San Diego (see organizations and networks).
The four documented editions ran in Spain and Portugal in July and August 2022; Guadalajara, Mexico, in 2023; Venice and Umbria, Italy, from 11 to 23 December 2023; and the Nordic countries in 2024. Each paired on-site study of specific buildings, such as Carlo Scarpa's Brion Cemetery near Venice or Alvar Aalto's Paimio Sanatorium in Finland, with lectures from researchers in fields such as perception psychology and environmental design.
Three of the four architects studied on these routes - Siza, Moneo and Souto de Moura - are Pritzker Architecture Prize laureates, in 1992, 1996 and 2011 respectively, and Barragán, studied through the Mexico edition, won the prize in 1980 (The Pritzker Architecture Prize, list of laureates, pritzkerprize.com). The prize is not a measure of a building's effect on the people who use it, but it is one widely used marker of which architects' work has drawn sustained critical attention, which is part of why these particular buildings recur across the architecture-and-perception literature this journal draws on.
Explore the program